crash and tremble
by edeabeth
Summary: (part one in Crash Course) sometimes Natasha isn't invincible and other times she needs a family. (torture, PTSD, S.H.I.E.L.D bashing)


crash and tremble

"all the valley had become tilled again and rich, and the desolation was now filled

with birds and blossoms in spring and fruit and feasting in autumn."

(the hobbit)

.

Steve was enraged.

Natasha had been missing for nearly an entire month on some sacred mission that was impossible to pull up from S.H.I.E.L.D's files whenever he had attempted to hack the program. Since she'd taken off on the mission the team had visited her apartment to ensure that she hadn't returned half alive and was intent on dealing with whatever injury she might have had in her own unique way.

(one mission long ago Steve had found her in the wreckage of some office building taping up a wound with plain scotch tape.)

The apartment was a joke. It was a single room type with a mattress shoved away from the door and crude kitchen that was emptied of anything other than protein bars and tea bags. Since then Tony had set Pepper up with the task of finding a suitable apartment that he had personally outfitted with proper security.

They'd gotten a single message saying that she had returned and was waiting for pick in the hospital wing. There was something so incredibly wrong in the written statement, and already they were bristling and ready to drag her back to the tower. So they'd taken off in one of Tony's incredibly expensive limos, prepared to deal with whatever fallout there might have been.

Except it had been worse.

She was restrained to a bed, thrashing desperately as two guards stood over her. "What the fuck do you think you're doing?" Clint spat at them, pushing them away.

"We're to keep her from escaping again," the one said sullenly, his glare damaged by the swollen lip and black eye. "She dislocated her damn wrist and tried taking off."

Clint punched the guard hard in the gut, unable to bite back the grin as he cried out. "You're terrifying her, you fucking imbeciles. Get the fuck away from the bed and stand down, or I will shut you down."

Tony and Bruce were buzzing around her, grabbing clip boards and reading through the papers. "Her feet are still recovering from burns, and her back is pretty messed up." Bruce reported, shifting through the piles of medical jargon and translating it the best he could for the rest of the group. He found he could no longer speak about what other injuries plagued her, spell bound by the horrors transcribed upon the papers he was reading. "Get her out, we're taking her now." He ordered sharply, hastily undoing the restraint on her ankle. Tony followed suit and suddenly Steve was carefully picking her up.

Natasha had fallen still as they released her, breathing hard as she was lifted up. "I told them nothing," she whispered in broken English. "Not even when they shocked me."

Clint cursed and Tony's face went grey. Bruce was directing them down the hallways, glaring as one Doctor attempted to stop them. "You wanna see the Big Guy any time soon?" He gave a mere warning as he pushed him out of their way. "We're taking Natasha, so don't worry about anything."

"Fury still has to debrief her!" The Doctor shouted as the rest trooped by. "She can't leave!"

"Does she look fit for a damn interrogation?" Clint spat.

"Interrogation?" Tony questioned as they pushed their way out the building and into the limo. The doors shut securely and Steve carefully positioned Natasha on his lap. Her grip on him had suddenly become tight and she seemed desperate to not let go of him.

Clint glared. "Look at her arms. See those scars?" Indeed there were small scars that crept up her bare pale skin, angry red scars that had looked as if they'd been burned in. "When she first came into S.H.I.E.L.D I had promised her safety, and they tortured her for any information. They do not trust Natasha and they never will. After a mission like this, she goes missing for days as they pull out any piece of information. If the council thinks she's hiding a single detail or misleading them, they'll electrocute her. Or beat her."

Natasha made a noise of protest while Steve carefully tightened his grip around her. "Then, they'll never get their damned hands on her." He swore as Happy drove slowly out of the parking lot.

The drive to the tower was slow and tense, Natasha occasionally trying to pull away from Steve's strong hold and Tony jotting down notes on his tablet that he used to correspond with Pepper. Clint sat across from Steve with a gun out while Bruce clutched the medical files.

.

"Natasha, I just want to take a look at your feet," Bruce said quietly as Steve sat her down on the dining room table. "Everyone who isn't Steve, get out." Natasha squeezed her eyes shut tight at the sudden brightness of the room compared to the growing darkness of the evening outside the tower.

Tony made a noise of disapproval but Clint yanked him out of the room with the promise of working on Operation Swippity Swoop. Bruce pulled out the rather large first aid kit and yanked a chair out to properly sit down. "I'm going to pull the bandages off, so just try to keep calm."

"They're fine," she opposed as she attempted to slide off the table. Steve had come up behind her and slipped his arms around her waist carefully. She stiffened sharply and tried to free herself but the bruised ribs made her unable to release herself from the super soldier's strong grip. She swore in Russian at them both but Bruce ignored her curses.

He sighed as he saw the damage done. "They'll heal up, but your feet will have scar damage."

"More scars," she mumbled. "What else do you want to survey?" She looked tired and exhausted, dark circles standing out despite the dark bruises that decorated her face. Her accent was also much more noticeable Steve realized.

Bruce carefully bandaged her feet again. "You're back, for one. Also, it says in the medical records that you were found deprived of sunlight and that your eyes are still quite sensitive to the light."

Natasha carefully pulled off the white shirt. "How much did it say?"

"Nothing but an account of your physical trauma, and a few comments on your mental stability." At that she stiffened. Steve was helping her remove the article of clothing due to her difficulty. Bruce repositioned himself around her and forced himself not to flinch at the damage done to her back. Welts from what he presumed was a belt were bright red and looked painful, splotchy bruises were everywhere. "What happened?" he sighed as he set to work cleaning the cuts.

She looked down at her lap, hands tightening into fists. Steve managed to get her to hold his hand and allowed her to squeeze tight as the sores began to sting. "I was in Russia. It was meant to be a three day affair but they saw through my cover. They locked me in a tiny room, as large as a small closet." Her voice broke and Bruce stopped asking her questions.

.

Natasha walked stiffly down the hall. Her eyes were covered with dark sunglasses that Tony had given her the day before; very aware that Bruce knew the entire extent of what she had gone through. She had overheard him attempting to pull details out of the silent physicist.

She came to a halt and leaned against the wall, unable to stop remembering everything that had happened. Being drugged, forced into a small room alone with a dead body of a child, the rape-

Red filled her vision. Her lungs felt like they were on fire and her heart was beating as if it were a war drum. Natasha slid down the wall and began sobbing, trying to calm herself but was drowning in the anxiety that was slowly dominating her.

"Tasha!" Someone shouted and soon footsteps were all she could hear. Hands grabbed at her but she couldn't understand who was touching her. Voices sounded muffled and foreign and she wasn't able to understand anything.

.

She whimpered as Clint tried to get her to relax, mumbling some Russian phrase. Steve's brow furrowed as he pulled the archer away slowly. He'd seen emotional explosions often during the war, how they would overtake the person and cripple them. Anxiety brutalized them and left them fumbling for reality and reassurance.

He crouched down beside her slowly. Natasha peered at him through the lenses of the sunglasses, hands trembling as she lifted them up to shield her face.

He spoke quietly and from memory, watching her reaction as he recited, "_In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort_." Tony uttered a noise of surprise while Clint and Bruce dragged him back a few feet. "_It had a perfectly round door like a porthole, painted green, with a shiny yellow brass knob in the exact middle_."

He'd taken to reading the series of Lord of the Rings after discovering it had been written by a soldier. Pepper had gifted him with a variety of books to read for leisure along with a set of history textbooks to help him adjust to the post-modern society. He'd caught Natasha flipping through the pages of the book once when he'd left it unattended, but hadn't thought much of it until he had seen her Spartan apartment. Nothing was there that could give an idea of the woman who lived there. Nothing but a spare knife and gun as well as an extra uniform. Tony had been outraged by the lack of anything and had taken it upon himself to give her a new home, filled with whatever she may have liked and had enlisted both Pepper and Clint.

He kept reciting as Natasha's breathing slowly evened out and her trembling ceased. "Where am I?" She spoke very quietly.

"You're in Stark Tower. You're safe." He promised her. "We brought you here yesterday. Do you remember?"

"Bruce threatened a Doctor." She said before stiffening. "Fury wanted me to be debriefed by the council."

"They can go fuck off," Tony swore, "they aren't getting their damned filthy hands on you anymore."

Clint nodded. "I agree. You're not their little errand girl. You're a person. I'm pissed that they sent you on this mission in the first place. The council has a lot they need to own up to and fix."

"That isn't for you to decide!" She spat in a hoarse voice. "You don't have any say in the matters between me and the council."

"Yeah. We do actually. We're family. A terribly dysfunctional family that runs by coffee and pop tarts, but we're a family. I am not going to sit here and let them tear you apart all over again. Remember the last time they had you interrogated?" He said harshly. "You wouldn't speak for nearly three weeks. You also wouldn't eat anything until Coulson threatened to hook up to an IV."

"Anastasia, you're family. You're a free person. I've already hacked into the computer networked and pulled up all of the contracts your name was on. You're released from them. You don't owe them a fucking thing." Tony added.

Steve helped her up off the floor carefully and let her lean on him. "We have a lot we need to discuss." He said very quietly.

.

_The drug made her vision blur. Men were surrounded her and forcing her to her knees, and suddenly they were dragging her. A gun went off and she tried to pull herself free as she heard someone scream. They were pulling her down dark hallways that were frigid, making her skin prickle as she slid across the floor. "You little bitch," one voice spat as she was suddenly thrown into a small space with no chance to understand anything before a man climbed on top of her. _

_She tried to push him off of her but her arms wouldn't properly function and laid uselessly at her sides. _

_. _

"First thing, your apartment literally sucks." Tony stated as they sat in the common room. "If we can even call it an apartment. Even Merida here had a better set up." Natasha sat down slowly on the couch and looked at him. "I can't believe you thought we would let you get away with that."

"Why were you in my apartment?"

Clint spoke up, "you were missing for over a month. We were getting desperate."

Natasha nodded. "The mission files were kept as a physical type, rather than electronic. The case was sensitive as it had dealings with the Red Room. The council hadn't wanted for any outside interference." The silent _from Tony Stark _were loud in the brief silence.

"You were in Russia dealing with the Red Room by yourself?" Clint gave her along stare. "They should have given you a team, backup. I should have gone with you! Why did they even think to send you by yourself?"

"This is the organization that took you as a child?" Bruce questioned from where he sat alone in the arm chair that was usually reserved for Thor.

She nodded and flinched as Steve suddenly pulled a blanket around her shivering form. "Thank you," she told him. "This is why I was chosen for the mission. My past experiences with them meant that I should have been able to handle whatever would occur during it."

"Except for breakdowns, exposure to the mass graves, the place where you were tortured," Clint muttered bitterly. "I don't know your entire childhood, but I know how it has affected you since. I've been here for you and I always will be."

"Back to the apartment," Tony cut in. "I've arranged for a new apartment that Pepper has been setting up, and Katniss here has been helping with the overall purchasing of things."

Natasha tilted her head in confusion. "You got me an apartment?"

"He's been working on designing a security system for the past two weeks. He even called the entire thing Operation Swippity Swoop." Bruce added. "I thought I was going to have to drug him so he would get proper sleep."

"There is no chance I'm going to let you sleep unguarded." Tony said defiantly. "Before you attempt to even argue with me on this apartment, you need it. You need a home. I don't regret doing it, and neither does Pepper. We all want you to have somewhere to relax in."

She nodded.

"We have some new rules for you though." Bruce told her. "You are not going off grid until I say so. You're still recovering."

Natasha didn't bother to try and protest. She felt so tired and drained, everything going up over her head. The panic attack had made her sluggish and yet overly aware while she was to numb to everything around her to fully drive up her walls. "And then what?"

"We work as a team." Steve told her. "Also, you're getting a pet."

She blinked at him. "Have I lost my hearing?" She questioned him, confusion filling her.

"You have from what we can tell a Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. It's been proven that pets can be useful, and Clint said you've always wanted one anyways." He shrugged. "Also, they're prone to making a person happier."

"Not that you're sour, or anything." Tony threw in as he waved his hand flippantly. "But we're going to check out dogs and cats tomorrow whether you like it or not. Also, I know you aren't allergic to animals. So don't even try it."

Clint leaned forward and grinned sharply. "After that, we're moving you in."

.

The adoption agency was filled with a wide variety of animals that came from many different backgrounds. One dog hobbled around on three legs while a cat purred as it blinked up with a single eye. Natasha felt small amongst all the animals and people who were wandering back and forth through the large rooms. Steve touched her hand very lightly and she gave him her signature small-barely-there smile.

"You do not want one of those rats," Tony snorted as a woman in a green uniform squawked at him and began ranting that they were in fact dogs and would be very loyal pets to have.

Clint began peering through the cages at the birds that were perched on fake branches of a faker tree. The birds were bright colours that reminded Natasha of Steve's jars of paints. "Can we free them?" He asked Tony in a bored manner. "They look like they wanna be free."

The woman from before began lecturing him on proper mannerism when browsing for a new pet while also dealing with the underlying concern of good commitment. Tony looked like he was seconds away from saying something else that would have been crude and terribly amusing so Bruce cut in and dragged both him and the archer away. "We need a collar and leash on the two of you." He mumbled as he corralled them to Steve and Natasha.

"Look around," Steve nudged her forward lightly. She gave the barred windows a wary glance while moving very slowly through the maze of kennels and loose critters wandering about. Several dogs barked at her as she passed by, making her flinch. "You said you didn't want a small dog, right?"

"Do you believe that Stark would let me walk out with one of those things?" She said as she skirted around a small animal that looked like the end of a mop. A couple of tanks caught her eyes. "Is that a snake?"

"And a turtle. The sign says his name is Lucky."

A cat rubbed up against her ankles. "I do not know what I want," she admitted. "Cats are independent, but a dog is a dog. I like dogs." She leaned down to pet the pit bull that had wandered over and nudged against her knee.

Before he could reply a golden retriever came over and sat down right in front of Natasha. The dog gave a long stare up at her and before anyone knew what was happening, the assassin was on her knees and wrapping her arms around the dog. "I think she found what she wanted," Clint said to Tony as they watched Natasha embrace the creature freely. "

"Maybe she'd rather the snake. It's kind of cold."

Bruce gave Tony a glare as he waved at one of the workers. "I think my friend has found the pet that she wants."

"Excellent!" The woman practically chirped. " I'll have her fill out the forms for Mr. Reputation whenever she's ready to do. He's up to date on all of his shots; you only need to sign off on a few things."

Natasha looked up. "What is his name?"

"Reputation. His previous owner died a few months ago in a motorcycle crash. He's a lovely dog, always well behaved. This is the most high-spirited I've seen the fellow since he's come here." She said as she noted the wagging tail and the way the dog had snuggled up in her embrace. "You're welcomed to change the name though. It might take a little bit of training to get him used to the name."

"I like it," she decided. "Can we go?"

.

Reputation, or Rep as she'd taken to calling the dog, sat very quietly in the corner of the living room as the boys carried the boxes into the room. Natasha was carefully placing books on the shelves, unearthing some new treasure from the box. Books were lined up in some organized fashion while Pepper dealt with the kitchen items.

"You women better appreciate us men folk doing the heavy lifting," Tony announced as he and Clint hauled in a couch.

Pepper rolled her eyes as they struggled. "You mean, after you expressly forbid both of us from doing any of the carrying?"

He muttered some reply as they positioned the couch in the center of the living room. "I'm going to set up the electronics." He informed them all as he slunk off the large boxes positioned in the corner of the room. "Just because you were raised on communist technology does not mean you can still use that stupid flip phone."

"I don't really need any of this,"

"You'll want it," he assured. "I made the laptop from scratch for you, and it'll outlast the end of the world."

Steve sighed as he brought up a box of shoes. The entire apartment was large and spacious and he had a feeling that Tony had stashed a variety of weapons around the rooms. The living room was an open space that had built in bookshelves and large windows. Tony was kneeling in from of the entertainment center that Steve had already put together. He grinned as he watched Bruce struggle with the dark red curtains and the curtain rod, balancing rather delicately on a ladder.

"How many shoes did you need?" He groaned as he began taking the box to her bedroom. He nearly tripped over the bright blue ball that Tony had purchased earlier.

"I didn't buy them," she warned as she pointed to her battered combat boots. "I thought these were good enough."

Pepper scoffed. "You need much more than boots. Running shoes, flats and sandals! And you'll always need a pair of good heels for an even better impression. Though, in your case, I'd stay off them for a bit."

Natasha managed to walk in a mostly smooth manner, but she still had a bit of an awkward stride due to the pain of the burns. "I'll keep that in mind." She said in a wry manner.

Steve left the shoes on her still unmade bed for Pepper to organize in the already mostly filled closet. The woman had gone out to purchase an entire wardrobe for the assassin while she'd been missing. Natasha had been unsure how to entirely take the adjustment to a new apartment, new wardrobe, her own private music, movie and book library. Tony and Pepper had refused to allow her to try to talk them out of the full extent of their early Christmas present.

(it wasn't even a Christmas present really. Tony was already designed her a motorcycle for civilian use while Pepper was searching for various first editions of books that Natasha had displayed previous interest in.)

.

Eventually the apartment was put together and everyone had left but Steve. He was puttering around in her kitchen making something that smelt rather good. Rep nudged against her knee before jumping up onto the couch beside her. "You know, you don't have to cook." She called out as she watched him lean over a cutting board.

"Barton mentioned all you made was ramen, so I figured proper food when you're still healing could be nice." He replied. "There isn't any meat in this, by the way. He also mentioned you didn't like meat to much."

She wrinkled her nose. "Except for fish."

She turned the music on, allowing the Beatles to fill the apartment. Steve grinned at the sound of All You Need Is Love. "I never really took you for a Beatle fan, you know."

"I never imagined that you'd be into Lord of the Rings," Natasha shrugged. "But what do you know?"

He poured water into a pot before putting it on the stove. "Pepper said they were worth a try, and Stark keeps referencing to the books."

She smirked. "I noticed Pepper added a set to the books she'd gotten me." All the books were lined very neatly to the shelves in some fashion that seemed to be the result of sizing. Rep placed his head onto her lap and flopped over to reveal his belly. She rubbed him with a display of affection that surprised herself.

A plastic cup slipped from Steve's hand, clattering against the floor loudly. She recoiled and squeezed her eyes shut tightly as she tried to force her breathing even. A wet nose brushed against her face almost instantly and suddenly she had a face full of a wide eyed dog doing his very best to get her full and undivided attention.

"Natasha?" Steve quietly asked her from the kitchen where he stood cautiously.

"I'm in my new apartment and you're making pasta," she said to him slowly. The pressure on her chest was slowly leaving as Rep distracted her with a whine. "That was annoying."

"Of course you would feel that a panic attack is annoying," he mumbled as he added pasta to the boiling water.

Rep barked.

.

A man in a black suit stood inside the entrance of the tower. Tony surveyed him blandly as he rattled a jar of shrapnel. "You know, this was inside my chest. I had to essentially, in terms that you might understand, sew a magnet into my chest in order to keep from dying. It was only a couple of months ago it was removed and I could breathe properly for the first time in a very long time. I guess you could say that your little threats do not scare me."

He gulped. "I am just under orders to take Agent Romanoff in for debriefing."

"What's your name?" Tony asked as the others gathered behind him. "I'm curious."

"Edward Andrew, sir."

He chuckled. "You have a terrible name. Anyways, right now Jarvis is hacking into your bank accounts. The point of this brave little stance I'm making is simply that I happen to like Natasha quite a bit. Sure, we hadn't gotten off on the right start, but who does? So, you're not taking her. She's ours now."

Clint mimed shooting him in the face. "You try, and we'll have a party."

"Is the Big Guy invited?" Bruce asked with an eager look on his face. "Because he feels quite fond for Natasha as well."

"You ever see what your own intestines look like?" Steve quietly asked the agent as he removed the knife Natasha had given him earlier from his boot. "They were a common sight during the war, you know. I knew a fellow who had the unfortunate displeasure of being pushed into the dead body of a soldier, his head landing into his already opened stomach. He stopped eating after that."

The agent ran away.

"It's getting way to easy," Tony sighed. "How do they hire these weirdos anyways? I though S.H.I.E.L.D had some sort of standards, you know. But I guess if they hired Merida they'll hire anybody."

.

"Pepper had her sister's fiancé put his name down for this place," Steve told Natasha as he walked alongside her down the street. "S.H.I.E.L.D would have to do quite a bit of digging to ever find it. As far as they think, you're hold up inside the tower."

Her hood was drawn up and her features were slightly exaggerated due to the layer of makeup she had applied earlier to hide the bruising on her face. Unfortunately the cut that extended down the left side of her face had turned into a pale scar that was still noticeable despite the concealer. "The apartment is quite nice," she admitted. "I still look for bugs and wires though."

"Habits die hard," he shrugged. Steve pulled out his dog tags from the war out of his pocket and showed them to her. "I can't help but play with them sometimes."

She gave him a slight closed lip smile. "Clint carries an arrowhead in his shoe. He swears it helps him shoot straight."

"Tony sleeps next to a jar of sharp metal."

"I think our team is weird."

"Thank God for Bruce," Steve sighed.

.

The next day she catches Bruce with socks that matched and realized the entire team was weird.

.

"I'm thinking about taking classes at the college nearby," Natasha admitted to Tony. "I've been doing research and maybe it's time I got a proper American education."

"An education that doesn't entirely teach how to kill someone?" he asked bluntly because that is what Tony is. He's a blunt and cruel man. Natasha would believe so if she hadn't found a picture of the entire team hidden inside his desk drawer beside a box of dog treats. "Let me know when you decide and I'll get you enrolled."

She nodded. "Thank you, I appreciate it. All of it."

Tony ignored her. "You're in the way, Russian Roulette."

.

God there is nothing more sentimental than Avengers fawning over the school girl, she realized on her first day of school. Bruce insisted on making her a bagged lunch while Tony was ensuring she had a bag well stocked with electronics fully charger. Pepper was insisting she might wish to have a normal notebook and set of pens that all happened to be red sparkly ink. Clint was trying to mess up her hair while Steve was tying his shoes to walk her to class.

Rep barked and she couldn't really fight the smile. Not this time.

.

_I am making a sequel to this story. It'll cover Captain America: Winter Soldier and the after events. Essentially I've found an abundance of Steve centric stories or Clint centric, but very few on Natasha. So, this is it. I wanted to make something where she had been greatly hurt and Avengers protect their own. I also wanted to insert service dogs for PTSD which, by the way, are fantastic and should be more advertised. _

_Enjoy! _

(next part will be longer and will fill in the blanks of what all entirely happened to her as well as dealings with the Red Room.)

(yeah, I do bash S.H.I.E.L.D and ages are Natasha being 25, Clint and Steve being 27, Tony being 29 and Bruce 34. Or Steve being, you know, technically a very spry elderly man.)


End file.
